DZ-111: Unreliable Narrators and FIGHT CLUB — Transcript

I mean, no wonder the manosphere jumped on this film, because it's all about men who don't take responsibility for their actions. And so they're like, that really resonates with me and how my life is not in my control.

I don't know. Hi, I'm Mel Killingsworth.

Hi, I'm Stu Willis.

And welcome to Draft Zero.

A podcast where we try to work out what makes great screenplays great. And on this episode, we are talking about Fight Club, the Seminole 1999 film, which actually makes this the 25th anniversary, right? And Unreliable Narrators. This is kind of a bridging episode between the episode we just did on voiceover and the episode we're about to do on talking to the camera. And you'll notice a particular person is absent because it turns out Chaz is actually me when I'm not sleeping.

Does that make me Helena Bonham Carter?

No. No, you're Bob.

Oh, okay. I'll take it.

Or Angel Face.

Oh, God, no. I'd rather be Meatloaf than Jared Leto. I don't know what that says about me.

But- You don't want to be a cult leader?

There you go. I'd much rather be somebody who's known for his weird grand final appearance.

All right. So this episode is without Chaz. He is having a much needed holiday. Plus, I actually think only people that have been punched should do an episode on Fight Club. And I'm making the broad assumption that the Englishman has never been actually hit.

Certainly not in his pretty face.

I want you to hit me as hard as you can. Why? How much can you know about yourself if you've never been in a fight? Wait, let me start earlier. Like many of you, I was stuck. You want me to deprioritize my current reports until you advise of a status upgrade? Make these your primary action items. I couldn't sleep. No, you can't die from insomnia. I'd flip through catalogs and wonder what kind of dining set defines me as a person? This is your life, and it's ending one minute at a time. I prayed for a different life. Soap. I make and I sell soap. This is how I met Tyler Durden. Come on, hit me before I lose my nerve. Ow, you hit me in the ear. It was on the tip of everyone's tongue. Can I be next? We just gave it a name. Gentlemen, welcome to Fight Club. The first rule of Fight Club is... Wow, nice. You do not talk about Fight Club. Is that your blood? Some of it, yeah. After Fight Club, we all started seeing things differently. You're gonna have to keep me up all night. And she ruined everything. You're not into her, are you? No. God, not at all. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars. But we won't. He had a plan. To what purpose? In Tyler we trusted. We gotta take Fight Club up a notch. Each one of you has a homework assignment. You're gonna start a fight with a total stranger. That's not necessary you're gonna lose that hurt, you were looking for a way to change your life you got it.

So fight club um part of the reason that we're doing this is that not only is it a great example of an unreliable narrator our patrons voted this it was like their top vote for us to do it when we were doing our episode of voiceover and we couldn't quite work out how to fit it in and so So, we actually end up going, let's do it as a standalone because there's a lot to unpack in this film. And it's great because I think it builds on the lessons that we've learned from our previous episode on voiceover. So in terms of summarizing Fight Club, it is the story of, quote, unquote, Jack. We open with him with a gun in the mouth that's been put there by a character called Tyler Durden, played by Brad Pitt. And we flashback to learning how they kind of started to work together. And the broad structure of it is Jack meets Tyler on a plane. They become friends. Jack's apartment is blown up. They start end up doing these underground boxing rings, the fight club, and that escalates into these kinds of, they call them vandalism. And then ultimately them trying to blow up the credit record. That's kind of the larger plot, if you can describe it, but it's a very sequence driven film. And I think that's what's interesting about part of the reason they use voiceover was to stitch it together. Would you agree with that?

Yeah, we were talking, I think let's talk through how many sequences do we think there are roughly. And you were saying before you think one person kind of guides each sequence, not necessarily through the voiceover, but through driving the plot or the events of that sequence. So let's kind of try to say where we think each of the sequences sort of start and end.

They were calling back to DZ53. I mean, we did a whole series on antagonists. So, Patron Julian asked us, if we had to place this film in our antagonist series, where would we go? And the series kind of broke down their central kind of narrative conflicts as character versus character. Classic, there's a hero and there's a villain. Then character versus the self, the character versus nature, character versus systems is how we called it. Some people call of society and then we kind of ended with the versus audience and i think mel and i have come to the conclusion that overall the show and we'll break this further down is versus audience the character's antagonism is with the audience but sequence wise my gut feeling is that there's kind of an antagonistic force per sequence right, And until Tyler emerges as really the kind of external antagonist at the end. So coming back to your question about how we would break down those sequences, let's ignore the cold open. So we open with this character who has insomnia, much like Mel has had this week. And he goes to support groups after an offhand comment from his doctor, which is like, if you want to see real pain, you know, go to the support group for men with testicular cancer.

And this is also, I do think it's important because we were talking about unreliable narrator. The fact that this is after the cold open, the first sequence immediately establishes that he is unreliable because immediately he's talking about going to these and presenting himself as one thing while he's actually another. So immediately the audience knows, okay, this guy's unreliable. I can't trust anything he says. So I think that that's really clear off the bat, which sets up everything we're about to talk about. It sets up how he uses the voiceover. It sets up the sequences. It sets up the versus audience. It sets all of that up.

Yeah, that's actually, and it becomes a bit of a thing that when he meets Marla Singer, the character played by Helen Bonham Carter, he says her lie was my And because he recognises her as an imposter, he can no longer impost.

Marla. Her lie reflected my lie, and suddenly I felt nothing. I couldn't cry, so once again, I couldn't sleep.

And it is interesting because in terms of what we learned from the previous, voiceover episode was two connected ideas. One, which is that voiceover is in a specific point of time, which in this film is coming from very late in the film. And part of its structure, I think, is that you kind of forget that it's come from that so far in the future.

And suddenly I realized that all of this, the gun, the bombs, the revolution, has got something to do with a girl named Marla Singer. Right.

So he is looking back at this and telling this story. And the question is, what does he want? And I think he, in some ways, is wanting a degree of, it's not just he wants to understand how we got in this situation. I mean, maybe in a way he's kind of, it's about him not taking responsibility because he is lying to the audience the whole way in the same way that he is lying about who he is to these people. So that's a great observation.

I think what you say about we almost forget that it's coming from the future is not necessarily because a lot of time has passed, but because even within the sequences, and sometimes I think as a transition point in between the sequences, which is really interesting, he jumps back and forth in time a little bit. So he tells the story roughly chronologically leading back up to the time that we've met him with the gun in his mouth, right? Except there's a lot of, oh, yeah, by the way, and you'll sort of see an event happening or an event within an event or an event sideways or an event which isn't necessarily specific in time, which is, you know, oh, when I'm an insurance adjuster, this is how I go about doing things. And that could have happened three years before the story starts or three days before the story starts. You don't really know. So because he's sort of going around and jumping around in time as he's telling this story, you've forgotten that, oh, right, we're catching up to this specific moment.

No, wait, back up. Let me start earlier. For six months, I couldn't sleep. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't sleep.

So, coming to the sequence thing, because this is connected to it, is that we've got this sequence with the insomnia. He meets Marla. And because basically he's like, I can no longer cry at these support groups and I need the crying to go to sleep, we need to start going to different sessions. And that kind of ends the first sequence. In a way, Marla, it's both a combination of his insomnia, but it's kind of personified in Marla is the sequence level kind of antagonist, because she kind of drifts in and out until they have a final confrontation, right? For me, structure is often really about midpoints that really, whether we divide into 3X or 5X or 8X, what you're really doing is looking for these points of change, right? That you kind of want to build the pattern and break the pattern. And Marla breaks the pattern when she turns up at his testicular cancer support group, right? But she's kept lingering in the background for a while, you know, so we see that he's got this problem. He can't sleep. He goes, the sports groups can sleep. Marla turns up. Now he can't sleep. Therefore, he kind of works with her to divide the schedule. And that kind of resolves that sequence. And it's not long after that sequence that he meets Tyler on a plane. At this point, there is a little bit of a now, a little mini sequence of him before that happens about talking about his work, right?

Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply it by the probable rate of failure, B then multiply the result by the average out-of-court settlement C a times B times C equals X, If X is less than the cost of a recall we don't do one.

Right. And that's I think the mini sequence does almost transition or help break the two sequences. You get the sequence that ends and then he's like, oh, let me tell you about this work. And then the work transfers us into the sequence where he's on a plane. He's talking to this total stranger. And then you see, you know, again, a flash sideways where he's like, let me explain how insurance adjustment works. And then it comes back. And then now he's talking to Tyler Durden. So that little sequence of let me tell you how my job works, it bridges the gap between what you're calling the first sequence and then the second sequence, which is where we get to know Tyler.

Yeah. And so the second sequence becomes, it's not just about getting to know Tyler because it's not long. It's pretty much from that flight when he's met Tyler that he goes home to discover that his apartment has been firebombed. And then he calls Tyler and they go to the pub and have a drink. Tyler starts doing his, you know, the things you own that end up owning you. And it's pretty much after that that Tyler gets him to throw the first punch, right? And they kind of have the first fight, isn't it?

Yeah, so they step outside the restaurant and Tyler's like, why don't you ask? Why don't you ask? And he's like, what do you mean ask? He's like, yeah, you can come back and stay with me. And then it does this weird, then it jumps sideways again and give us another mini sequence. Then it comes back to the parking lot or so far as I can tell, A little bit afterwards, they're in a slightly different location, but wearing the same clothes. And that's when he gets him to throw the first punch.

I mean, just from a purely, like, I'm going to be really mechanical about where these things go. Him having the drink with Tyler is at the 30 minute mark, right? And the Marla turning up is at like 15 minutes, right? So that idea that she comes along and disrupts him and therefore that is a problem that needs to be resolved and is resolved by the end of this act. Act so we're calling it sequences but in some ways it's it's an act it doesn't really matter he called them sequences call them acts whatever they're just structural stuff and that's when he meets tyler which as you say is like a mini sequence and then yeah.

Yeah so they go out then they're both talking and then norton then takes us to the projection office which i think is another one of those mini see and i know we're going to get into that in a lot more detail but that's what actually breaks up the moment in the parking lot where tyler's like come on just ask, come home with me. Then we do that little mini sequence where he's in the projection office, there's barreling, there's a lot more going on. And then we're back to the similar setup. So it looks like they've started walking maybe a little ways away and that's when he throws the first punch.

Yeah. And it kind of escalates really quickly. Like the next kind of, this sequence is really kind of a montage of him beginning to build Fight Club with Tyler.

Right, so sequence three is building Fight Club, if we were to slap a label on it in an outline.

So I think what's interesting is that sequence, that kind of 2A sequence, you know, act first part of 2A, whatever you want to call it, is pretty much the rise of Fight Club. And it transitions out of it when Marla calls saying, I've just taken a whole bunch of Xanax, right? And then it's about Tyler's affair- with marla right then she becomes the antagonist because i think maybe.

They both become the antagonist we've had one of each and now i think in this third sequence it might be both of them.

Yeah because.

It's both of them having sex constantly that's driving him nuts.

Right but like she is definitely creating conflict in the previous thing it's all about tyler and and jack being buddy buddy and then that kind of ends she kind of comes between them as tyler's plans kind to escalate so we get the great little sequence of them stealing fat from rich ladies and then we get the chemical burn sequence which in some ways is the midpoint right i.

Think that yeah the midpoint in a couple of ways but it's also the first really explicit sign that they are each other because that's the.

First time.

It's a i think this might work as another mini sequence right Right. It's the first time that we've really noticed or been shown the scar on Tyler's hand. And it's immediately after he's given Norton, the narrator, Jack, the scar. And so that's our first really explicit. It's its own self-contained thing. It's just the two of them sort of going at it. But that's the sort of, I think, calling it the midpoint in a lot of ways works.

This is a chemical. It'll hurt more than you've ever been burned and you will have a scar. Guided meditation worked for cancer. It could work for this. Stay with the pain. Don't shut this out. No, no, no! Look at your hand. The first soap was made from the ashes of heroes, like the first monkey shot into space. Without pain, without sacrifice, we would have nothing. I tried not to think of the words serum or flesh. Stop it! This is your pain. This is your burning hand. It's right here. I'm going to my cave. I'm going to my cave. I'm going to find my power handle. No! Don't deal with it the way those dead people do. Come on! I get the point, okay? No, what you're feeling is premature enlightenment. It's the greatest moment of your life, man And you're off somewhere missing I am not Shut up Our fathers were our models for God If our fathers bailed, what does that tell you about God? No, no, I don't care Listen to me You have to consider the possibility that God does not like you He never wanted you In all probability, he hates you This is not the worst thing that can happen It isn't? We don't need him We don't agree Fuck damnation man, fuck redemption. We are God's unwanted children, so be it! Okay, so, I'm getting water! Listen, you can run water over your hand to make it worse or, look at me, or you can use vinegar to neutralize the burn. Please let me have it, please! First, you have to give up. First you have to know, not fear, know that someday you're gonna die. You don't know how this feels! It's only after we've lost everything that we're free to do anything.

I mean, I think there's actually, just scanning through it again, it's a combination of three different threads, right? So, the combination of roughly in the middle, the storyline is he basically gets himself let go from, not even let go, he quits his job after blackmailing his boss.

With severance.

He has the scene where Jack goes over to check Marla's, she calls Jack and he turns up to, you know, check to see if she's got a breast cancer, right? Right. And when he's coming out of that, I'm pretty sure that's when he runs into Bob and learns that there are other fight clubs that it's been running on other nights.

So in this sequence, it's almost as though systems or society is now the antagonist. Going back to your whole series.

Yeah, yeah.

A lot of his system, his job, right? Meatloaf and the new growing, sorry, Bob, and the new growing sort of number of fight clubs, Marla. And part of Marla's thing, right, is like the medical system and blah, blah, blah. So in this sequence, it feels like it's very much him versus society. And I do think, which is kind of the point of this, right, that broadly overall, there's no main antagonist. It is the audience. But if every sequence has an antagonist, it's this one is versus systems or versus society.

Well, I mean, I think another way I think about antagonists is what is kind of giving rise to the dramatic questions. You know, the dramatic question that is asked at the beginning is, you know, how does Jacqueline go to sleep? He starts, oh, he starts going to the support groups for what happens when he's kind of confronted with another imposter. Well, they end up having to reschedule. Then he meets Tyler. And then it's like, you know, the question is, I guess it's like, can this fight club grow? And it's not a heavy plot question, but you can kind of get away with it at the beginning of act two as they culminate. And then there's a series of things, like the question starts becoming in that two way, like, can he continue turning up to work looking like shit. There's constantly seeing him turning up to work with more and more bruises and blood, and you're like, at some point, something's got to happen, right? So, that becomes this kind of like a, dread, a question of, you know, can he sustain this? And that is answered at the midpoint, right? There is a question between will you know, potentially a kind of question of will Marla become between him and Tyler, right? And it kind of does. I don't think they kind of have a break at the midpoint and then the running into the Bob with as, oh, if I go on whatever it is, you know, I go on Monday, Wednesdays, play the exact audio from Bob.

Cornelius? Cornelius! It's me, Bob! Hey, Bob. We all thought you were dead. No, no, still here. How are you, Bob? Better than I've ever been in my whole life. Really? You're still remaining men together? No, no, I got something so much better now. Really? What is it? Well, the first rule is I'm not supposed to talk about it. And the second rule is I'm not supposed to talk about it. And the third rule is... Bob, Bob, I'm a member. Look at my face, Bob. It's fucking, it's fucking great. I've never I've never seen you there. I go Tuesdays and Thursdays. I go Saturday. Congratulations. Yeah, hey, to both of us, right? Have you heard about the guy that invented this thing? Well, yeah, actually I- I hear all kinds of things. Yeah? Supposedly, he was born in a mental institution and he sleeps only one hour a night. He's a great man. Do you know about Tyler Durden?

Creates a new question, which is what is going on? This kind of mystery of what has Tyler been doing, right? And then that kind of builds into the Project Mayhem stuff, right?

Right, which is this whole other, you know, sequence and things are starting to sort of escalate and certainly get out of his control.

Yeah. And ultimately, I would say in a traditional analysis, the low point's probably the death of Bob, right? So that's when Milo gets. gets they're doing their kind of vandalism stuff which is kind of it doesn't feel like it's hurting anyone up at that point it's it's vandalism and.

Well they all start i mean they start fights with a bunch of strangers right yeah and and the priest one is the one to me that is the most amusing because a lot of the one that the camera is sort of big and distant the priest one amuses me because it does seem to be saying this guy needs to let loose a little bit and he doesn't get hurt so So much as he kind of like figures out like, oh, maybe I've let off a little steam. So you're saying no one gets hurt. And technically people do get hurt.

Angel face gets his foot.

Right. But but he's in the fight club. We're talking about like people outside of it. I think Angel Baby is the culmination of those things. But we're looking at the people around and at the start of Project Mayhem. It's like people are getting hurt, but like they're also finding something out about themselves. Yeah. You know, I think it sort of toys with that idea. idea and then yeah the angel baby thing i think is probably the culmination of this sequence where it's like oh shit.

Oh i yeah i mean really what we're getting into is that the final two sequences right uh one jack learning who tyler is right so the mystery or the driving question is what has tyler been doing and then the second half is once you've got the answer to that question which is he's been planning to blow up things is then trying to stop tyler right so i think I think the last section of the film is a lot more back to a classic versus another character, you know, hero versus villain kind of- Hero versus villain.

Which is also hero versus self. Dun, dun, dun.

Dun, dun, dun. So it's interesting breaking it through into that structure because then you're going, how does that then connect to the voiceover and the idea of versus audience? And so I think part of what the voiceover does is it kind of lets us stitch those things together. And as we talked about, like, there's little transitional moments that kind of make it feel like it's got unity because there's someone who's literally telling us how these things connect together, right? And the overarching mystery that they're trying to get us to go is because there's not a driving huge plot question. Until, you know, what has Tyler been up to, right, really the end of the third act. I think the other stuff is kind of more loose.

I love that we've literally divided it into like six sequences and you still say third act.

Look, I use 1A, 1B, 2A, 2B.

Just call it 2 if you're going to call it 1B.

Oh, look, these days I just use sequences. So, but I think it's just because a story may be six sequences, the story may be nine sequences. You know, as we talked about, there's these little mini sequences in here and if i was doing this with cards which i do i love cards they would have their own column right because i basically do cards with columns for a sequence in a and a sequence maybe and often i'll actually have a column that's for like midpoint or turning points because i think as we saw here the culmination of those three storylines kind of all hit at once in the same way that in like at the midpoint and then the the low point being oh he beats the shit out of Angel Face. Oh, Tyler drives him off the side of the car and then him learning the truth of Project Mayhem, right, and him not breaking up with Marla, but kind of confronting Marla. They're all kind of like bang, bang, bang. So they'd probably be their own column in terms of how I structure this, so. You know, it is the voiceover is raising the question to kind of stitch it all together, which is, how did I get here? Well, let's find out.

Yeah, the film is very, very heavily voiceovered. And so to sort of bring it back into the context of this whole miniseries that we're doing, it's very heavily voiceovered. There's moments of fourth wall break with the character talking to audience. There's moments of fourth wall break without the character talking to audience. But my big take, which kind of ties together both things that we were talking about, the antagonism to the audience and the fact that my takeaway from this watch in context of this is, if the narrator is controlling the rewind when we're seeing things, if the narrator is controlling the cutaways, if the narrator is controlling the edit and the order in which we see events, which he clearly does, Because then that means not only his voiceover, but literally everything he is saying to other characters is speaking to the audience. Everything he says to Marla, everything he says to Bob, everything he says to Tyler is him speaking to the audience because he's showing us those things.

Yeah. And so it's coming from what does Jack want?

Yep. Everything is Jack. What is Jack trying to get from the audience? What is Jack trying to impress upon the audience?

So, I think the way I would rephrase that is coming back to our previous episode, which is what point in time is the character speaking from? Coming back to our four questions, what point in time is the character speaking from? He's speaking from the moment he's got the gun in the mouth. At this point, Jack knows he's Tyler. So, there is a version of this story where he can go back and just tell us right from the beginning that Tyler is his split personality and the character is choosing not to. I mean, obviously the writers are choosing not to, but the way it's presented is, the character is choosing not to tell us, this person tyler is actually him and.

The most generous read of this is he's not telling us because at that point in time in his story he didn't know right that's the most generous read but the what i think is a more accurate although potentially more egregious read is he's not telling us because what he wants from us is sympathy and understanding and for us to look at him as you know not the bad guy which.

I think is you know as we talked about in the voiceover of episodes, I think it's actually a good reason to use voiceover.

Absolutely.

It's like characters explaining, I mean, Pain and Gain is all these kind of psychopathic characters, as in characters are incapable of feeling empathy for most other people, explaining their motivations. And Jack is explaining his motivations. And of course, he's then saying, oh, this is all Tyler's fault, you know, or he starts off with, this is Marla's fault. And then it's Tyler's fault. It's not my fault.

It's society's fault. Yeah, I mean, he's going through and essentially each of the sequences is blaming somebody else, right? If they're each versus somebody.

Yeah, I mean, you know, we're a generation of men raised by women. You know, it's all about these men apparently joining a self-help group.

And he's blaming the audience. Like, if the audience is the antagonist, he's blaming the audience. He's blaming society with not just his voiceover, but also when he breaks the fourth wall. There's also, once you understand, once you re-watch the film and you understand that narrator and Tyler are the same, there's a moment where Brad Pitt's Tyler Durden is breaking the fourth wall. It's around the hour and a half mark and he's kind of upside down and he's barreling because in theory, he's looking directly at this like corporate suit guy that they've tied up in the bathroom and he goes on this rant at him.

Hi, you're going to call off your rigorous investigation. You're going to publicly state that there is no underground group, or these guys are going to take your balls. They're going to send one to the New York Times, one to the L.A. Times, press release stop. Look, the people you are after are the people you depend on. We cook your meals, we haul your trash, we connect your calls, we drive your ambulances. We guard you while you sleep. Do not fuck with us.

And then when you understand that that's the same person as the narrator, you understand that the narrator is ranting it at us and blaming us for his downfall. And it's certainly the antagonistic towards the audience.

Yeah, there are so many shots in this film where the characters are literally barreling, you know, there's shots in a frame looking pretty much directly at camera.

Some of them are excused because you immediately then get a point of view shot. So, for example, the narrator will barrel, but then the next shot is a close-up point of view of the list of self-help meetings. And so you're like, oh, is he barreling or is he looking at that? Well, it's both. Fincher is clearly playing with that idea that it's both. But they all barrel at different points, and they're all very meaningful, which I know, again, we're going to talk about in that projection of sequences, which is the biggest explicit fourth wall break in the whole thing.

Okay. I'm going to go through these questions that we've used in the last couple of episodes. And I'm going to start at the bottom end. From when in time is the communication coming? And as we talked about in the voice episode, then it's like, what does the character know at this point in time? And then that will ultimately lead to the dramatic purpose, which I guess is the overarching question. When is the time, is the communication coming? When Jack has confronted Tyler and has now, you know, put a gun in his mouth, right? Because Tyler wants to take control of Jack. Who are they talking to, from themselves or to the audience?

I argue the audience, all the way.

I think you're right. You know, it's very much addressed to the audience. And then it's like, I mean, I don't know if this question is actually that valuable anymore, but it was like, you know, who is doing the speaking? Is it ranging from, is this in character or is it to a more omniscient storyteller? Right. I think that's really this character to storyteller. And it's really about what view of this story does the character have? And this then connects to, is this voiceover diegetic or non-diegetic? But for me, it's, Like, is the character aware that they're in a film?

Okay, I think they are because there's a scene when he's breaking the fourth wall where he says, I'd like to thank the Academy. And it's this real level of meta-ness where you're like, this is Jack, this is narrator, this is Tyler, this is Edward Norton, this is David Fincher breaking the wall. And I think that to some extent, if the character speaking is coming from a present or future point in time, it tends to be omniscient, right? Because he's omniscient. He knows that he and Tyler are the same person by the time he's speaking to us. But I think that that thing of, I'd like to thank the Academy while he's breaking the fourth wall clearly shows he's not just omniscient, he knows he is.

Look, nobody takes this more seriously than me, that condo was my life, okay? I loved every stick of furniture in that place. That was not just a bunch of stuff that got destroyed. It was me. I'd like to thank the Academy. Is this not a good time for you? Just tell him you fucking did it. Shh. Tell him you blew it all up. That's what he wants to hear. Are you still there?

I mean, you've got a couple of other similar breaking the fourth wall moments. So you've got there's a speech given by Tyler, you know, they're all singing all dancing crap of the world, where the frame shakes and you actually see sprocket holes of film on the side. And then they repeat that again when in the flashbacks we see Edward Norton performing what Brad Pitt has done. But also, even earlier, the great moment when Jack is talking about the IKEA nesting instinct, and he walks through his bedroom with all the prices and the names of the furniture that he's bought. That is breaking the fourth wall. That is stuff that is non-diegetic, right, that is clearly pointed for the audience. Ah, and I think I've worked out with this diegetic to non-diegetic character storytelling spectrum, connecting it to you, which is how much power over the telling of the story to the audience does the character have? It's something like that. So in this, what you're saying about Fight Club is that Jack, as the character, has all the control in how this story is being presented to the audience, to the point where he's kind of aware. That is different from Veronica Mars, right? She doesn't really have that much power. It doesn't come across that she is controlling the story that's being presented to us. That's interesting then to look at like Emperor's New Groove is something where it does feel like the Emperor has a bit of control, but not all control. He literally gets frustrated. It's like, this is who you should be paying attention to. Me. It's my story, not this person's story. Like he's not fully in control of the narrative. And in Pain and Gain, those characters, they're giving us the voiceover. But I don't think the presentation, like the reason that we're saying, oh, it feels like Michael Bay's telling us the story is actually this feeling that the characters themselves are not controlling how that story is being presented. Obviously, on a literal level with Fight Club, we understand that it's David Fincher telling a story. But the way the story is constructed and part of the projection of sequence reinforces this is it is Jack. And maybe it comes from the novel, but it is Jack presenting and telling us what he wants us to do, because we want to understand that he's not really responsible for this. Yeah, some people die, we blew up some shit, but you know.

Very selectively telling us exactly what he wants us to know. Literally cutting to close-ups and rewinding and saying, oh, about this.

I mean, no wonder the manosphere jumped on this film, because it's all about men who don't take responsibility for their actions. And so they're like, that really resonates with me and how my life is not in my control, even though clearly Jack at this point has control over the entire narrative.

This goes back to what in the episode DZ53 where you're talking about the character versus audience. What I think ties in here, clearly Jack is versus the audience and how the audience took this film and to be fair, is still taking this film. There's a note that like a lot of films if people watch it and they say you know i don't get it about a film they're probably watching a film whose central conflict is with the audience because the reason that jack is speaking directly to us this whole time is that's the central conflict sure each of the sequences has many different conflicts but the main conflict the main person that he's speaking to and the main thing he wants to believe and the main thing he's butting up against is us, is the audience.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think the projectionist sequence is a really transitional sequence for us to begin to understand that it's Jack that's got the control of the storytelling, right? And it is unsurprisingly the sequence where we actually see him talking to the camera.

Let me tell you a little bit about Tyler Durden. Tyler was a night person. While the rest of us were sleeping, he worked. He had one part-time job as a projectionist. See, a movie doesn't come all on one big reel. It comes on a few. So someone has to be there to switch the projectors at the exact moment that one reel ends and the next one begins. You can see these little dots come into the upper right-hand corner of the screen. In the industry, we call them cigarette burns. That's the cue for a changeover. He flips the projectors, movie keeps right on going, and nobody in the audience has any idea. Why would anyone want this shit job? Because it affords him other interesting opportunities. Like splicing single frames of pornography into family films? So when the snooty cat and the courageous dog with the celebrity voices meet for the first time in reel three, That's when you'll catch a flash of Tyler's contribution to the film. Nobody knows that they saw it, but they did. A nice, big cuck. Even a hummingbird couldn't catch Tyler at work. Tyler also worked sometimes at the banquet waiter at the luxurious Pressman Hotel. He was the guerrilla terrorist in the food service industry. Street do not watch i cannot go when you watch apart from seasoning the lobster bisque he farted on meringue sneezed on braised endive and as for the cream of mushroom soup well go ahead tell him you get the idea but.

You know it's essentially jack of cluing us who tyler is at this point and we see some of tyler's antics so you start with him in the projection booth and you know him splicing in Dick's subliminally, which is connected to the fact that they've spliced in Tyler into the film subliminally. There's like 12 shots of Tyler for one frame leading up to when we meet Tyler. And then we see Tyler dealing with the food at the restaurant where he kind of pees into the- Yeah.

We see him in the bathroom. We see him walking through the tables and then we see him, I think those are the only three before we're back on the street for the punch.

Yeah, yeah. But in each of those scenes, Jack is actually barreling the camera, to use your term, looking at the camera and talking to us with Tyler doing something else. And so from a story level, it's because it's actually Tyler, Jack isn't there. He's kind of doing it as kind of a news presenter thing, but he's not really there.

A lot of this. So in an episode that we're going to be recording next, and we're talking specifically about fourth wall breaks or addressed to camera or barreling, however you want to describe it. I think that the real contrast here, right, is with the show Fleabag, where Fleabag is constantly breaking from a scene, barreling and talking, but none of the characters are aware of it. Whereas in this scene, the projection is sequence when the narrator is barreling that Tyler is completely aware of it. He's not just responding to it by like pointing at the cigarette burner, but the dialogue and the things that he's saying, even though he's not looking at us and he's not even always looking at Jack, the narrator, they're clearly understanding each other and what's going on. They can hear each other. They're interacting both of them with us and with each other. So they know what's happening. And that's really clear in that sequence. It's not a fleabag type.

And it's a flashback within a flashback. So it kind of feels like it's so divorced that you can have Jack talking to the camera here. But there's a version of this where it's just voiceover. The interesting thing is they obviously have made a decision for us to see Edward Norton barreling the camera in this scene with Tyler doing his antics. And the question is, why? What is their purpose as filmmakers? And also, why is Tyler choosing or Jack choosing to present the information in this scene? Is it so we kind of reinforce the idea that Tyler and Jack are separate people? Is it to make it like so we don't clue into that earlier?

I think it could be all of those. I think a slight underpinning one is that they're doing it because literally they start in a projection office and then you're getting really meta about the only things you see are the things the filmmaker wants you to see, right? So the filmmaker can tell you only what they want you to know until the twist of the story, etc. I think that Fincher is playing with that a little bit. I don't think it's the main reason, but I certainly think it is a clearly thought through reason.

Okay. Okay, so this is the mind bob I'm going to set up that come to mind when we're looking at the scene in pieces to camera. And the scene that we're going to be looking at Fleabag in the next episode is the scene when the priest looks at the camera. And I think the reason that works is because it is Fleabag realising she no longer has control of the narrative. So coming back this to the idea that one of the questions that you should actually be thinking about when the character is directly addressing the audience is how much control do they have over the telling of the narrative? I think it's fair to say that audiences assume when they're watching a film and none of the characters are actually talking to us or talking to the camera, that they're actually controlling the information that's being presented. The film may be eschewing closely to their point of view. Oppenheimer is very clearly inside of Oppenheimer's point of view, but I don't feel that Oppenheimer is actually controlling the dials of how his story is being presented to the audience. And obviously, there's stuff on the extreme meta end, which maybe we'll look at a future episode of like adaptation.

Yeah, yeah, oof. In the text, yeah.

Yeah, it's in the text. And for me, part of it would just be it's about creating this idea early on that Tyler is a separate person from Jack. Yeah. Right. This whole piece is like Tyler has this other life where he's a projectionist and he works as a waiter and all these things is about presenting Tyler as someone who exists apart from Jack. And it reinforces that by Jack standing there and talking to the camera in the flashback. But it works because it's also Jack who is controlling the story. He is telling the story to us and the story includes the pictures that we are seeing.

I also think that scene works a third way, which is once you have finished the film and you go back and rewatch it, it's also Jack controlling exactly what Tyler is doing that we see. It's literally almost, you know, Emperor's New Groove style where he says something and then the character then does that thing. And it's like, oh, wait, why are you making me do this? You know, omnipresent voiceover. It almost works that way as well. So it works on multiple levels, which I think, again, when you add that layer of, you know, thanks for the Academy Award, which is like, well, whatever the director says is puppeteering what the characters do as well. But I do think it's interesting that in Ebert's review, he talks about the film having final scenes that redefine the reality of everything that has gone before. Call it the Kaiser-Sose syndrome. And looking at it in those terms of someone who's literally telling his own story, sure, to the cops, but also to us, the audience, to attempt to bring us over to his point of view, I think is really fascinating. Because both films are doing it in very different ways. One is much more direct about how it's addressing the audience. But yeah, redefine the reality of everything that's gone before, I think is the exact summation.

Yeah, and I think it is good, but it is also him redefining himself as somewhat of the hero. Because if you think about the plot question, he works out that Tyler is him. Is Tyler a villain? He's certainly an anti-hero and he's got to stop him. So he's kind of restructured himself as I'm the hero. In the third act of this film, you know, there may be people that are sympathetic to him wanting to blow up the credit card companies. Not that would work 25 years later. They'll just be like, yep, let's just use the other cloud storage that we've got everything in. But it is interesting. It's him trying to present himself somewhat as the hero. And, like, his confession to Marla and all that stuff is about- Tyler, well, Jack trying to present himself as the hero, but it's also not his fault, right?

He's the victim that then rises up to do the right thing. He's trying to have his cake and eat it too. Yeah. Or his soap and eat it too, whatever.

And I think coming back to this idea of the unreliability, the unreliability is inherent in the fact that he is lying to the audience, knowingly lying to the audience in order to garner sympathy.

I mean, you can argue he's lying to the audience the same way he was clearly lying to himself for a long time.

The point is it's a choice that they've done, driven by character. That fits who Jack is, but also Jack is constructed by what he does. So our interpretation of the character is through that. But I think coming back to your point early on is that, that his unreliability is demonstrated that to us early when he goes through a whole bunch of names. Cornelius.

Doesn't have your name.

He's lying to us the whole time, and his unreliability is also connected to the fact that he does have control of the narrative. And whether or not we're consciously aware of it, I do think there is an element of it subconsciously that we're aware of the fact that he is telling this story. That I don't really think we break into a genuine, like we may split from Brad Pitt to shots of Marla and stuff like that, but we never really break into a B storyline, where we're following another character inside of their point of view, right? So it's kind of really myopic or really glued to his perspective in terms of the voiceover. And that is different from Pain and Gain, you know, and that is different from Empress Newgroove and Veronica Mars. I don't think it'd be that much different from Fleabag. It's certainly going to be different in Abbott's Elementary, which we're also going to be doing in the next episode, because I think what's interesting about mockumentaries, or more broadly speaking, kind of found footage stuff, is that the characters do not have control of the filmmaking. There is a crew there that is mediating what we're seeing, right? And so then it's going to be interesting, like High Fidelity, where that sits.

Well, right. High Fidelity, I think, is really interesting, because for the most part, you've been comparing a film that doesn't to TV that does. You're filling 22 episodes and you're finding a lot more sprawling time. However, High Fidelity is really interesting because it is 10 episodes. It's much longer and it almost does entirely stay within the one person's point of view, which is interesting.

Yeah, which will be interesting to look at when we get there. So yeah, I'm going to rework those questions. I mean, obviously we've been talking about Fight Club in the abstract and we did break down those sequences, but I don't think there's any particular sequences that come down to, you know, oh, look at how they've used voice over here. I mean, there's obviously, there's great little bits where they're like, sometimes Tyler spoke for me and then, you know, Tyler says something and then Jack says it.

Sometimes Tyler spoke for me. Fell down some stairs.

Like a lot of the really kind of good clues they've used, the plants they've used to set up Tyler, to come back to our, I'm not sure if you've listened to it, the episode we did on everything everywhere all at once. We talked about the difference between plants and pointers. So, pointers is something that we're basically meant to be aware of or conscious is a setup. And then plants is something that we're only meant to understand with setups in reverse. And I do think there's a lot of really great writing in flight, in flight, in flight cub. Cub there's a lot of moments that are about working towards the revelation that tyler is him i look it's been a long time since i saw this film in the cinemas in 1999 so uh which means clearly i went to the cinemas when i was one year old um talking about unreliable narrators this.

Is an audio medium they can't tell.

I definitely think they did that revelation really well that i was like oh you know we have lost cabin pressure and they kind of do it twice the way they kind of play out that kind of him working out what's going on and so the the plants are really really well done and the kind of the way that they have treated the surface of the film like even just having those the flashes of tyler in there which i've always noticed since but when I don't know if I saw them first when I saw it at the cinema, the IKEA Nesting Instinct sequence, the kind of the way that plays a little bit of the surface of the text. I think we are aware that this is a story that's being told to us from someone that we can't necessarily trust, who has an agenda for another way of thinking about it. So, I think thinking about your character, if I was to do voiceover now, thinking about how much control this character has over the storytelling. Are they just controlling the voiceover? Are they controlling what scenes we see? Are they controlling how we see those scenes right and then how that connects to their agenda what do they want from us is is interesting you know there's some kind of space in there you can kind of play with do you have anything more to add to that i i kind of feel like we've moved into kind of wrap up but yeah um i.

Do think that this is a one shot is a really interesting bridge and when we were talking about it um you know when the patrons voted on it it was just hard because it does so many different things, we're like, oh, does it fit in the fourth wall break? Does it fit in the voiceover? But it's a really great bridge because it does a lot of the different things that we're covering in this whole series.

Yeah. And I think this, for me, the revelation of how much control, and maybe control is not the right word, but how much control does the character have over the story that we are being told is actually a really interesting one. And because it does then come back to what do they want and tactics, because something that we've talked a bit on the podcast and anyone who can want to hear me rant is that I think sometimes we spend too much time thinking, you know, we go, oh, you know, a scene needs a character with a want. And they go and get it. But I actually think the want is not as defining as of a character as their tactics, right? That how a character tries to go about what they want is probably more indicative of who they are. Oh, they want power. Yeah, but are they going trying to seize it with guns? Are they trying to do it with charm? Tactics are so important, but tactics are informed by what resources you have, right? As in, what do you have access to? It sounds very mechanical, but I think that's really useful. And resources if you're an unreliable narrator are going to be what you have control of in terms of the storytelling will influence the tactics you are going to have in telling that story to in talking to the audience.

And how you approach getting what you want is probably in a lot of ways more indicative of your character and by character i don't mean character in a story i mean your moral uh you know fortitude and approach than what you want because a lot of people want haunt money or power or adoration or love and it's not necessarily wrong to want any or all of those things but how you go about it tells the audience a lot about the type of person that you are and the type of character you have and then how you are going to approach in in the case of fight club not just approach other people but approach us approach us the audience yeah.

I think I think there are obviously moments that the film breaks its rules. So, I've seen his film so many times, but I think this was the first time that when Jack is beating himself up in front of the boss, there was a version, a moment when I went, Jack actually thinks the boss is beating him up. Right? There's just a couple of lines in there or a moment of performance where I'm like, oh, we're actually seeing- having a moment where we're seeing Jack from the outside, that he isn't faking it.

That's interesting. See, I didn't read it that way. And there's one like five to 10 second sequence when he starts to throw himself backwards and it freezes, right? And then it kind of cuts to the boss and it cuts to another moment. And then you see that moment again. But before that moment, before he throws himself backwards into the bookshelf, he looks over his shoulder. Older and to me that's him going all right how am i going to maximally say just what's the distance between me and that space that i need to cover when i launch myself backwards and so i found that really interesting that that they specifically showed it because to me that is like clearly, premeditated stunt work like what can i do that makes a big enough mess that it's not just the marks on my body but it is a damage done to a scene that when someone walks in they will think that my boss has done X. Yeah.

Okay. Yep. I think my weird little momentary interpretation is wrong, but I think what is interesting is how it's built on the end of that sequence, but it does show that he is controlling the presentation to the audience. And it does remind me of that moment, you know, you've got those inserts as he says those words, but the moment earlier where he talks about Planet Starbucks and we're flying through, right? He wants us to kind of, you know, it's Mickey Mousing a bit, to use a term I dropped earlier, but do we have anything else to add to our conclusion that's been concluding for maybe 45 minutes?

I don't think so. I think that's a pretty good, I do. I really think it's a good bridging episode and I'm glad, I think it does kind of stand alone. It doesn't tie as directly into any of the things we've picked for the other episodes, but it really does overall tie into all of our examples.

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I'm certain our editor will be.

Yep.

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